Greetings chess fans!
Just Chess has just received a huge update packed with new features, quality-of-life improvements, and bug fixes. Here is a look at what’s new:
📻 Built-in Music Player (Radio)
I've added a virtual radio that comes with hundreds of included tracks to provide the background music for your matches!
How to use: The radio UI appears seamlessly when you hover your mouse at the very top of the screen (Note: The camera needs to be facing roughly the opposite side of the board).
Features: Volume control, skip track, mute, shuffle, and continuous loop.
The radio displays the name of the currently playing track and features a moving tuning dial. If you turn the radio off, the game will remember your choice for your next session.
🏆 Player Tournaments (Internal & UCI)
You can now play full, structured tournaments against the game's internal engine or your own imported UCI engines! In UCI mode, the game automatically generates opponents of varying skill levels (if the imported engine supports skill adjustment). Choose the number of participants and play in 4 exciting modes:
Simulated: A standard structured tournament against a pool of AI opponents where you aim for the highest score on the leaderboard.
Arena (3-Losses): Face a gauntlet of opponents and try to clear all stages. Three losses and your run is over.
Survival: Battle endless waves of opponents. You start with 3 lives: a win grants +1 life, a draw +0.5, and a loss removes 1 life. Survive as long as you can!
Time Attack: Keep your chess clock alive! Winning rewards you with a time bonus of +75% of your initial base time, and a draw gives +50%. The tournament ends immediately if your clock runs out.
You also have the option to spectate matches between the AI opponents as the tournament progresses. Tournaments can be paused, saved via the intermission panel, and resumed during your next play session! (Note: Tournaments are not available in Lichess mode due to API limitations).
🤖 Engine vs Engine (EvE) Tournaments
Curious to see which of your UCI engines is the absolute best? Set up epic auto-battles between them!
Round Robin: Every engine plays against everyone else.
Swiss: Winners face winners. Perfect for large numbers of engines where a Round Robin would take too long.
Gauntlet: Choose one "Hero" engine that plays solo against all other selected challengers.
You can choose to skip move animations for much faster processing. At the end of the tournament, a clear cross-table displays the final standings.
PGN Export: Copy the full tournament PGN (or just the games you personally played in Player Tournaments) to your clipboard with a single click, making it incredibly easy to paste into tools like Lichess Study!
🔍 Post-Move Analysis
A brand-new tool that gives you immediate feedback right after a move is played (works for both your moves and the AI's).
A blue arrow appears on the board showing what the optimal best move would have been.
A second color-coded arrow evaluates the actual move played, categorizing it as Good, Inaccuracy, Mistake, or Blunder.
Tip: Analysis tools use some hardware resources. You can easily toggle these features on and off using the new hover menu on the right side of the board.
🎨 Theme Manager
Make the board your own! You can now customize the colors of the black and white pieces, the board squares, the board edges, and the table surface. Your selected settings are saved automatically.
⚙️ Other Improvements & Bug Fixes:
Seamless Undo/Redo: The move history navigation has been greatly improved. You can now scroll smoothly back and forth through the entire move history, rather than just restoring one move at a time.
Camera Smoothing: Manual camera rotation using the mouse has been smoothed out, making the movement feel much more fluid and less robotic.
Clock UI Update: The 2D digital chess clock has received a visual redesign to better match the game's aesthetic (more UI elements will receive visual updates in the future). You can also swap between 2D and 3D clocks by simply double-clicking the clock, in addition to using the 'C' key.
Bug Fixes & Stability: Major under-the-hood improvements have been made to game stability. Specifically, the bug where "Puzzles during a timed run often don't set up properly" has now been fixed!
(A quick note on analysis: The internal chess engine uses a short calculation time to provide fast evaluations. If you notice any obvious mistakes or blind spots in the analysis, please let us know on the community forums!)
We hope you enjoy these new tools and features. Have a great game!